Folk Music was defined initially by the academics who peceived it in the first place in a grand act of cultural condescension - although one would hope they'd be a bit more cautious these days with respect of defining anything, much less condescending to do so. Folk Music can only ever defined by idiom, genre & style; or rather idioms, genres & styles - an innumerable plethora of the word o'er, though in The Colonial Revival it's mostly defined by context and the people who love it and play it. The 1954 Definition is of marginally less use than the 1954 Dandy Book, a copy of which held my words tonight in the Feetwood 175 Show of Folk Songs, all of which were written & arranged by the people involved - so Style/s and Context, no horses, and plenty of folk character - and characters - and not one of them taken over by the community and left unchanged.

If I were a religious man, then I might be tempted to believe otherwise. But as I'm not, I must look at the empirical evidence at my disposal - thus do I conclude that all music is the consequence of all manner of traditions and processes, thus to call it The Folk Process - thus claiming it is somehow unique to Folk - is sorely mistaken. Unless all music is folk music after all...